Meeting Abstract
The subfamily Grammitidoideae (grammitid ferns in the family Polypodiaceae) encompasses 33 genera and approximately 750 species of ferns distributed across the neotropics, southeastern Asia, and Oceania. Included genera display significant morphological variation in characters such as rhizomes and rhizome scales, laminae, and arrangement of sori and sporangia. Many grammitid species ferns are undescribed, making it difficult to protect the biodiversity of ecosystems to which they belong. In particular, the Malaysian Peninsula is a focus for conservation efforts — the biodiversity of this region is rich and includes endemic species, and grammitids thrive in mossy montane forests of this region. We sampled ferns from Penang Hill to analyze morphological characters using herbarium specimens, photographs from online herbaria, and dichotomous keys to identify the samples. We sequenced five chloroplast loci and incorporated the sequences into a dataset consisting of 258 identified species of grammitid ferns to generate maximum likelihood tree and Bayesian trees that establish relationships between identified species and our samples. Both samples are closely related to other species from southeastern Asia, placing them in the tropical Asian clade. One of the samples likely belongs to the genus Ctenopterella (Ctenopteris). The distribution of this genus throughout our trees strongly suggests that it is not monophyletic. The other sample is related to the genera Radiogrammitis and Oreogrammitis, based on molecular analysis, but examination of morphological traits indicates that it not only belongs to Radiogrammitis, it is a species new to science, or at least to Malaysia.
